


Cold Shapes

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Gen, Partial Nudity, Royai Week 2018, Suggestive Themes, extremely dubious alchemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 23:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: Late August, and Central City is crushed under a brutal heatwave (like a wall, like being shot, like the whole city is melting off the ground underneath like cheap makeup).There are  eleven different desk fans stationed around their office, and all they manage to do is chop the soupy air into a desultory breeze that only just manages to stir the hairs glued to the back of Riza's neck.And Roy?Is nowhere to be found.For Royai Week Day 5, "Summer"





	Cold Shapes

There was this man she knew in Ishval, not an alchemist, or a sniper, just a man, who she didn’t really  _ know _ , but somehow passed every single day, and She can’t remember his name anymore, just his face, towheaded, perpetually surnburned, with the palest eyes she’d ever seen, and his gun. He carried a Webley .577, a handgun of egregious aspect and cartoonishly large caliber. It hit like an eviction notice taped to the front of a freight train.

August hits even harder.

It’s the humidity: like a wall, like being shot, like the whole city is melting off the ground underneath like cheap makeup.There are  _ eleven _ different desk fans stationed around their office, and all they manage to do is chop the soupy air into a desultory breeze that only  _ just _ manages to stir the hairs glued to the back of her neck. Across from her, Havoc holds up his wilted cigarette with a mournful sigh.

“It is  _ so hot _ , my goddamn cigarette won’t light. Paper’s too wet. This is  _ hell _ .”

He’s stripped down to shirtsleeves, like they all are, fanning himself with a stack of abandoned field reports in his off-hand.

“My glasses fogged up as soon I walked out this morning,” Fuery offers, peeling off his headset with an audible  _ sucking _ noise and a disgusted grimace.

“It’s just,” Havoc gestures vaguely, “ _ wet _ . Hot and wet. Bet the Colonel can’t even snap.” He pauses, frowning and peering around behind the fan on his desk. “Where is he, anyway?”

All eyes turn to her.

“I’m not his babysitter.”

“You kind of are, though.”

“I’m not. And I’m not-” she yanks her hair clip out-it just keeps  _ slipping _ , it’s too  _ hot _ and it won’t-combs through her hair, and tries not to linger on the salt she can  _ feel _ drying it tacky and grimy and- _ jams _ her clip back into place with a growl, “I’m not going looking.”

She leaves the office five minutes later.

 

* * *

 

Roy is not in the canteen, or the Archives, or the gym, and she’s almost given up entirely when Riza hears water running from behind the door of an officers-only guest suite on the fourth floor. Half a suite, really, just a bed and a-

Shower.

Son of a bitch.

She shoulders through the door, and he’s there, mirror unfogged because he’s running the tap cold and in the reflection, she can see:

His hair, slicked back and glossy as he pushes it back under the spray, and the water beading on his eyelashes, his half-parted lips, eyes closed and sighing, very softly. There is a puddle pooling in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, another overflowing down from notch of his collarbones to spill down his chest before disappearing behind the shower door. Half a door, really, mid-chest to mid-calf, and the turn of his ankle looks startlingly vulnerable framed by the heavy wood.

It’s...not a  _ bad _ picture. Erotic, even, under better circumstances.

Mostly it makes her want to punch him in teeth.

Riza clears her throat. Loudly.

His eyes flicker open, sleepy and languorous and then abruptly blown white and wide with a blush racing down from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck. 

“You’re  _ dismissed,  _ Lieutenant!” he snaps. “What are you  _ doing? _ ”

His gloves are crumpled on the edge of the sink. She stares at them, eyebrows raised. Looks at him, flatly, and very carefully tucks them into her pocket. Okay. Okay.

“The Obvious,” she quips, settling herself down in a faded chair in the opposite corner. He’ll break first. She’s known him for twenty years, and he grew up with more sisters than good shirts and  _ she _ had to win back her own bathroom with salt and blood from a revolving host of teenage boys from six to sixteen. He’ll break first.

“The Obvious,” he parrots.

She shifts minutely, unholstering her gun and laying it in her lap, pinning him with a hard look. “You don’t have your gloves. Unless you’re wearing that shoulder rig somewhere I can’t see, you don’t have a gun on you. Very reckless, sir. We all know that you’re-”

“‘Useless when wet’?” he mutters sourly.

“You said it, sir. Not me.”

Roy slumps back against the tile, mashing his cheek into the cool, slick wall behind him and squeezes his eyes shut.

“It’s too  _ hot. _ ” he whines. “I can’t work like this.”

“Try harder.”

He  _ will _ break first, but even so, she has to close her eyes, just for a moment, turns them down to check the action on her pistol, so she won’t have to see his hangdog, wounded look, or the water sluicing down his forearms, elbows up with his hands laced at the back of his neck. 

“It’s a shame,” she says instead, still staring resolutely down, “you never did get to McDougal. Then you could just…

“Shit!” He yelps, and the tap shuts off. She can hear a soft spatter, like rain, he presses the water from his dripping hair, sees his reflection rip a towel from the wall and hop one-footed behind the shower door, muttering “No, shit, you’re right, it’s the- _ fuck _ -the cold shapes!”

“The  _ what? _ ”

“Cold Shapes!” He says, explaining nothing. She blinks. “It’s not really my area of  _ expertise _ , but if I could just.. _.remember _ what that circle looked like, the…”

“Cold Shapes?” 

“Yes! Exactly! Silver, maybe? Or a moon…”

Riza tells herself that the noise she makes watching him struggle back into his shirt is more exasperated than fond, like she tells herself that she’s only watching his back and not  _ watching _ his  _ back _ as he twists and tugs at his sleeves. At some point he makes a dash past her out into the main room, still only half-dressed in his shirt (one cuff undone, still flapping around his wrist) and towel, trousers flung over his shoulder, to scribble something on a notepad lying on the bed. Riza opens her mouth. Closes it. Walks back into the bathroom to collect his jacket and scrape her--god _ dammit _ \--scrape her hair back into place and re-clip it  _ again _ .

“You have his  _ file _ , sir. In your  _ office. _ ”

 

* * *

 

The circle etched into the chalkboard bears only a passing resemblance to McDougal’s; he’s added what looks like...cinnabar, maybe, some kind of horned circle that she vaguely recalls as  _ congelation _ . Probably. Whatever it is he’s added, it takes up most of the board, which he’s unhooked from the wall and laid on the ground, ringed by every fan they’ve got. Hayate’s water bowl sits at its center. Hayate himself regards the whole affair from under her desk with the deepest canine reproach and suspicion.

“Is this gonna work?” Breda ventures. Headset still around his neck, Fuery nervously shifts his entire set-up, piece by piece, to the furthest corner he can find.

Roy gnaws at his lip. “Yes. Most likely.” He drops to one knee, looking back over his shoulder. “Yes.” 

And:

“And,  _ Lieutenant Breda _ , may I remind you, that I am still your commanding officer? It’ll work.”

It’s ludicrous, on the one hand, but on the other hand.

It’s  _ hot _ , like the air is boot on the back of her neck, crushing down, like the whole city is about to run off the face of the Earth like cheap makeup, like a Webley .577, straight to the head.

His hands, scarred and gloveless, hover above the circle.

Riza catches his eye and nods.

He brings them down.

**Author's Note:**

> There is SOME basis for this in medieval alchemy:  
> The astrological symbol for Taurus may be used to denote a freezing reaction; cinnabar, or mercury sulfide, combines both mercury (associated with the moon, water, etc), and sulfur (denoting the "spirit", vs. the mind and the body).  
> But it is EXTREMELY tenous and I for sure made this ALL up.


End file.
